I
I
The^ME^BERN
5 Per Co^
VOLUME 4
NEW BERN, N. C., FRIDAY, APRIL 6, 1962
NUMBER 48
Because this town of ours is
hardly more than a stone’s throw
away from the broad and often
turbulent Atlantic, the idea of min
ing minerals from the sea should
.hold at least mild fascination for
industry-conscious New Bernians.
All streams and rivers, includ
ing our own Neuse and Trent,
carry with them to the ocean an
assortment of minerals in solution.
As a matter of fact, we are told
by those who ought to know that
Virtually all of the minerals im
portant to mankind are present
in soluble form.
Science has figured out through
exhaustive tests that a cubic mile
of seawater contains 166 million
tons of dissolved salts. Admittedly
85 percent of this tonnage is com
mon salt, but included also are
26 million tons of-magnesium salts,
four million tons of potassium sul
phate, and lesser amounts of cop
per, zinc, tin, iodine, uranium and
gold. The last named minerals are
in rather small concentrations, but
they can’t be disregarded.
Evaporation of water taken from
the sga already makes it possible
to mine many minerals, but the
problem is how to do this econom
ically. Obviously, no commercial
concern is interested in spending
more money to extract the min
erals than the harvest will bring
on the market. Undoubtedly, when
ores now available on land become
depleted, the value of sea min
erals will soar.
Dame ..Nature ' has pointed the
her gigantic natural evap-
^^'^Wrallon basins in the Dead Sea. No
other spot in all the world pro
vides as much common salt for
man’s use. And it is an established
fact that the basins, with sound
industrial methods used, could
furnish us with countless millions
of tons of magnesium, potash and
bromine.
Heaven only knows how many
minerals in huge quantities are at
the bottom of the Atlantic and
other oceans. We are told that the
sea floor is cluttered up with
lumps described as “nodules.” Said
to have been formed by natural
chemical processes, they ai’e load
ed with considerable quantities of
copper, iron, nickel, manganese
aiid cobalt. Plant and animal life
show mineral concentrations too,
and may eventually be the answer
to profitable sea mining. Seaweeds,
as most of us know, are already a
commercial source of iodine.
At the present time, man hasn’t
developed sufficient know how to
meet the challenge, and he may
never meet it in our life span.
Experts have said that a plant
handling approximately a million
gallons of water a minute is just
about as large a unit as you could
operate profitably, or conveniently.
Technical problems not yet master
ed make a larger project imprac
tical.
Thinking in such terms, they say,
we could get by on the basis of
our present needs with one fac
tory for magnesium, two for
potash, and perhaps three for sul
phur. However, if we relied solely
on minerals from the sea, we
would require 427,000 factories for
nickel, 800,000 for copper, and 10
million for iron.
Even someone as poorly versed
in science and economics as this
editor knows that we’ll never have
this many plants operating. "The
answer, of course, will be amazing
methods of mineral extraction that
mortals haven’t dreamed of yet in
their wildest imagination. Make no
mistake about it, the miracles will
come, as surely as the day follows
the night.
No one cognizant of the astound
ing things that have happened in
our space age is apt to regard
profitable sea mining impractical
if not impossible. Although the
(Continued on back page)
MAY EACH OF
I
YOU REMAIN
HALE and HEARTY
• J
i-n
UNTIL
MARCH 1963